A freight train jumped its tracks and crashed into a home's garage while traveling through Niagara Falls this morning. Weirdly, this is the second time a train has crashed into the same garage. The first time was around 50 years ago.
"The whole house shook," the resident of the home, Lori Morreale Harris, told USA Today. Her destroyed garage sits about 10 feet away from her home. (See photo of the aftermath below, posted by 7 News WKBW.)
The crash reminded Harris of the first time this happened in the 1970s, when a train jumped the tracks and hit the same garage that, at the time, belonged to her grandparents.
The CSX locomotive reportedly jumped the rail at about 8:15 a.m. Monday, striking a garage behind the home …
Marcus Gillebaard, a North Tonawanda resident and former CSX locomotive engineer who retired in 2019 after 41 years of service, stopped by to survey the scene on Monday afternoon. He said the area in question is where the railroad has a "y-shaped" section of track, which is used to maneuver engines and cars back and forth. At the back of the property, there is a steel bumper, which is designed to prevent rail cars from running off onto residential property.
Gillebaard said it appeared as though they were attempting to use the Y-track area to maneuver the locomotive so it could move in the opposite direction when, for whatever reason, it did not stop.
Gillebaard said the locomotive in question was likely being operated via "remote control" instead of an actual human engineer, which he said is a system that has been a point of contention for his former union for many years.
Fortunately, neither crash caused any injuries. But one bystander from the neighborhood, who was also around in the 1970s, said enough is enough. "This is the second time now…The same thing happened, the train went through and crushed the garage," Bob Kachurek said, via Yahoo News!. "If someone was in that garage they could have gotten killed. How important can 200 yards of track be?"
